Dear Faculty,
An update on the proposed “Flexible Delivery Mode” (hereinafter FLEX) being introduced by Seneca College. As with any delivery decision, the decision to deliver FLEX must be a collaborative decision between faculty and their chair. It is not a unilateral decision.
I have been advised by Academic VP Marianne Marando that Seneca will support professors that choose the FLEX model of delivery.
- The College will add 2 hours of PD to support Flex to a full-time Professor’s SWF and an additional hour will be added for taking the course on Flex Delivery (Fundamentals of Online Teaching).
- Partial-load Professors/Instructors will be paid a 2-hour non-teaching contract for the duration of the semester (14 weeks) to engage in professional development around flexible delivery. They will also be paid a non-teaching contract of 9 hours for taking the fundamentals of online teaching course.
Flex in simple terms, requires the subject Professor (F/T or P/L) to deliver the lecture in-person (not labs), the class is recorded and broadcast for synchronous viewing for those students that chose to participate at a remote location.
The student has the option to either attend in-person or online. The subject professor must still be physically in the classroom for the lecture to be broadcast, regardless of the number of students in attendance.
The subject professor will have support for the technical aspects of the broadcast. In most cases, the lecture or the classroom is set up for Flex delivery by a series of motion cameras that follows the Professor and has a panoramic view of the entire classroom.
In some cases, the college will provide a technician to film and broadcast, if necessary.
Finally, copyright and privacy issues still have to be addressed.
The following link provides a series of videos produced by Seneca on the four different modes of course delivery, which are: 1) In person, 2) Online, 3) Hybrid, and 4) Flexible:
https://www.senecacollege.ca/campuses/course-delivery.html
Frank Yee
President
OPSEU Local 560